Innocents Abroad

When they got hold of a party of travelers, they often moved in their company several days, using all manner of arts to win their friendship. At last when this was accomplished, the real business began. The travelers were invited to sit . . . unconscious of the death-angels at their backs. --Mark Twain on Thuggee murders in Following the Equator

Theresa Anne Knowlton, 18, an American girl, arrived in Bangkok last October with vague intentions of becoming a Buddhist nun. Shortly after her arrival, she met a fast-living young Frenchman by the name of Alain Gauthier and attended a party at his apartment, where he was heard to remark that it would be fun to take Theresa to the nearby beach resort of Pattaya. A few days later, on Oct. 18, Theresa's bikini-clad corpse was found at Pattaya. She had been drugged and buried in the sand.

Vitali Hakim, a student in his early 20s from a wealthy family in Istanbul, was on vacation in Bangkok. He bought some diamonds from a dealer who said his name was Alain Gauthier. Gauthier invited Hakim to visit the famous jewel mines at Chanthaburi. On Nov. 28 Hakim's body was found on the beach at Pattaya. It had been drenched in gasoline and set afire.

Henricus Bintanja, 29, a chemist, and Cornelia Hemker, 25, his girl friend, both from Amsterdam, were on a trip around the world. In Hong Kong they met a gem dealer who called himself Alain Dupuis. He invited them to his luxury hotel, sold them a blue sapphire at half the usual price, and told them to look him up in Bangkok. To their surprise, Dupuis was at the airport when they flew in, and he drove them to his apartment. They soon became violently ill. On Dec. 16 their bodies were found on the roadside 40 miles north of Bangkok. They had been drugged, then burned.

Deputy Superintendent Narindar Nath Tuli, 52, a crack New Delhi detective, got a strange feeling when a call came in from the three-star Vikram Hotel. The agitated hotel manager complained that 20 French tourists registered at the hotel were vomiting and rolling about as if they were drunk. Worse, they were accusing the manager of having poisoned them. Tuli, remembering that Interpol had alerted police to a series of druggings and murders of tourists in India and Southeast Asia, rushed over to the Vikram. There he was struck by a peculiar fact: only one of the group, a man by the name of Alain Gauthier, had not got sick. Tuli arrested him.

His hunch proved right. Gauthier had used so many aliases and false identities, often derived from the passports of his victims, that it was difficult to learn who he really was. The French Interior Ministry said he was one Charles Dumurcq, 32, who had been officially expelled from France in 1974 after a series of thefts and frauds. In India, however, Gauthier used the name Charles Gurmukh Sobhraj. New Delhi officials said he had been born in Saigon of an Indian father and a French-Vietnamese mother. Gauthier is believed to have spent his boyhood in Paris and trained as an engineer in Japan. Along the way, he learned six languages and became a master of karate.

Whatever his true identity, Gauthier left a trail of druggings, robberies and murders that stretches from Hong Kong to Kathmandu--and perhaps farther. Also arrested in another Delhi hotel a few days later was Gauthier's alleged chief accomplice, Marie-Andree Leclerc, 31, a French-Canadian medical secretary who met and fell in love with him on a visit to Bangkok. Police believe that the pair committed at least nine murders in India, five in Thailand and two in Nepal. They are also suspected of crimes in Canada, France, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Pakistan and South Viet Nam.

Detective Tuli credits Gauthier with "one of the sharpest minds I have come across." He says Gauthier and Leclerc watched Air France flights for likely targets, then checked into the same hotel as the new arrivals. Taking their victims out for a good time, they liked to order chicken curry, apparently because it disguised the taste of the still unidentified drug that they used to poison them.

One of those who lived to tell about the experience was a 36-year-old American schoolteacher who met Gauthier and Leclerc in his Hong Kong hotel last January, went to dinner with them, then returned to their hotel room at the new harbor-front Sheraton. Six days later he was found in a drugged stupor, wandering in his underwear in the hotel corridor. His only recollection: "I felt very dizzy, and I realized I needed help." His passport and money were gone.

Although Bangkok police detained Gauthier and found passports and belongings of the victims in his apartment, he was let go, possibly after some money changed hands. Only after low-level diplomats in Bangkok became alarmed over the pattern of deaths among visiting tourists was Interpol notified. Thai authorities have said they will seek Gauthier's extradition, but in India he first faces an array of charges, including murder, for which he could be sentenced to death by hanging.

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